Tuesday, September 2, 2014

THE LIFEGUARD & THE FROG

Two
days ago I rescued a frog that had jumped in the pool at my summer suburban complex
with the help from the lifeguard named Bryjon. He’s a 16 year old small forward
on the boys varsity team for the local Jersey high school located behind my
condo development. Bryjon is six foot
two or something. He’s a great kid with a Panamanian grandma and a Trinidadian Mom.
He lives across the hi-way from me and his family works hard so he can go to
that high school here. Earlier in the summer he went to basketball camp and now
he’s working as the lifeguard until school starts. He’s in the advanced English
program so he has a summer reading list and makes use of his time. During the
day the pool is occupied by a few old retired women who soak up the sun between
gossip sessions and long cigarette breaks. When someone like me actually swims,
Bryjon puts down his book and attentively watches the pool. He's been reading
some good books for the last 2 or 3 weeks. Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. Oscar Wilde’s The
Picture of Dorian Grey. And I've been discussing casually these and others
like Huckleberry Finn. Plus, we talk
basketball, which I love but could never play well because hell I’m Jewish and
not even 6 feet tall...well if I do enough pilates I might just get that half
inch someday. Anyway, saving the frog was difficult and we had a time
constraint. The longer he stayed in the water the more chemicals he'd consume.

Bryjon stood
with the pole and skimmer trying to scoop him up and I remained in the water. I
had to keep diving down trying to grab the frog but he was a slippery fucker
and he would swim back up only to have our Star athlete miss him. By now I’ve
taken to calling him Bryjon Bryjoff as an homage to The Karate Kid and because his dumb teammates call him Bri…lazy
kids. He’s supposed to be the coordinated one of our dynamic frog recue duo. But
I quickly learn Bryjan has some awkward moves up his sleeve. As he takes a
swipe at the water the little frog dives back down, deeper and deeper into the
deep end of the pool. I have very sensitive ears and hate pressure drops and have
needed ear plugs to swim ever since I was a toddler. But I’m diving 8 feet down
anyway trying to get the little frog back to the surface so Bryjon can get the
rebound and score. After a few more misses he finally catches him. And I climb
out just as Master Skyscraper boy starts to raise the skimmer’s long aluminum pole
to the top of the ten foot fence, ready to whack it like he's knocking down
leaves.

“Dude, wait,” I scream, “you’re gonna kill
him! That's a long way down for a little frog. Bring that here.”

So he
lowers the skimmer on to the concrete. I
ask Bryjon to grab him and let him go thru the chain links of the fence onto
the grass and freedom.

"I’m not touching him!"

"Seriously, Bryjon? He's just a little
frog.”

It took a moment but I finally got it: the
basketball star lifeguard is afraid of frogs.

“O.K.
I’ll do it.”

I
carefully picked up poor Mister Frog, who was half comatose by now. I gently slipped
him thru the chain links and placed him on the grass. But he wasn’t moving. Shit, I thought, this was all for nada. I figured our amphibious friend had
succumbed to the chlorine. I wasn’t quick enough.

Just then,
that little green fucker shook his head, sprang to life and high tail hopped
out there into the wooded area never to be seen again. By now the office
manager and the head grounds keeper had entered the pool area and were watching
me. They were shaking their heads like why did you even bother. I said to them:
"Hey, he could've been one of my
dead friends or one of your deceased family members. You never know." They
both looked at me like I was certifiably loony.

I
eventually returned to swimming my laps. After fifteen minutes an enormous
bumble bee sped past Bryjon’s head and buzzes over my shoulder as I was treading
water. Bryjon pivots in his chair and lets out a juvenile gasp.

“That
was a really big bee.”

“Yeah,
it sure was Bryjon Bryjoff.”

The
next day I gave Bryjon a copy of Invisible
Man. I hope he reads it before school starts and he gets distracted by his
official curriculum. And as for me, I will happily spend what’s left of the
summer at the pool protecting my lifeguard from any and all of Nature's smallest
creatures.

David Aaron Greenberg is an artist and writer. He the author of Gravity (selected poems), co-author of 15 Paintings/15 Texts (with Donald Baechler) and Strange Messenger: The Work of Patti Smith. His writing on art and culture has appeared in Rolling Stone, Parkett, The Fader, Frank 151 and Art In America. Greenberg is one half of the songwriting/production team Disco Pusher.